SUPERSTAR

Comedy Short 30 min

Best Film Award 2021 - Colortape International Film Festival (Brisbane, Australia)

It's almost every little girl's dream to become a big movie star. Ileana is no exception. When a travelling theater company visits her village in South-East Romania, the mayor grabs the chance to turn his ''niece's'' dream into reality. He tries to get it done quickly, the old Romanian way. But God, the show's director, has other plans and asks Vili for help.

Directors Statement

One day, my friend Stefan Caraman, the writer of the script, sent me a great visual piece of his writing in my mailbox. After reading it, I immediately told Stefan I want to make a movie based on his first story from the “Superstar” volume because I thought it was representative of the village world. He embraced the idea and also helped to gather the funds needed to produce the movie. With the help of Mr. Gheorghe Tilinca, the mayor of Casimcea, a small village in Tulcea county, Romania, we started the “SUPERSTAR” project. I wanted to serve well Caraman's writing, so I imagined colorful characters, sometimes even absurd. I gathered the cast from In Culise Theatre. I was so fortunate to work with great actors whom I knew very well and worked with before. They understood exactly what I was asking from them. It was a great joy for the whole team to film this movie in a very hard moment for the industry, the 2020 pandemic. The cast's enthusiasm helped us have a great atmosphere on set. The shooting took 5 days, we were a little disrupted by the rain – otherwise scarce in Dobrogea –, but we immediately adjusted the schedule and moved inside for the few interiors we needed and we got just in time with good weather so we could finish the shooting. There was a scene that was cut off the film because of lack of time, but it was for the better because we could fit the film in 30 mins. It was a real struggle to cut the first cut of 38 mins into 30, but I hope it’s for the best, and more people will have access to screenings. A great success was the participation of Victor Rebengiuc (the narrator), who is an accomplished actor in Romania and it was a great honor to work with him even just for giving the voice to our story.